McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)

[cigar joe]

I like that original title poster 

[dave jenkins]

http://thedissolve.com/features/movie-of-the-week/774-the-making-and-unmaking-of-mccabe-mrs-miller/

[cigar joe]

http://thedissolve.com/features/movie-of-the-week/774-the-making-and-unmaking-of-mccabe-mrs-miller/

thanks

[drinkanddestroy]

http://thedissolve.com/features/movie-of-the-week/774-the-making-and-unmaking-of-mccabe-mrs-miller/

Thanks 

[cigar joe]

For those that read the article here is the chapter by chapter breakdown of the novel.

http://www.fistful-of-leone.com/forums/index.php?topic=1523.msg101259#msg101259

[Groggy]

http://thedissolve.com/features/movie-of-the-week/774-the-making-and-unmaking-of-mccabe-mrs-miller/

Excellent find.

[Novecento]

Yes thanks 

When is this going to get a BD release? Zsgimond commented last year on "an amazing print" he had the opportunity to watch:

http://filmmakermagazine.com/87150-old-faded-pictures-vilmos-zsigmond-on-mccabe-mrs-miller/#.VVj8Lxfncfo

[dave jenkins]

Huh, watching the DVD last night, I could see where getting a good HD transfer might be difficult. The phony snow falling in front of the lens looks, well, phony. Probably any kind of clean-up program would read the phony snowfall as scratches and missing info and try to fill it in. Or maybe it might just shut the system down. Then there's the whole issue of flashing--it obscures detail to such an extent, maybe an HD transfer wouldn't look like much of an improvement over SD. And there must be a whole host of other problems, even WITH a great print as a starting point. So, somebody may be working on it, but I'd expect it to take more time than just about anything else.

[drinkanddestroy]

Huh, watching the DVD last night, I could see where getting a good HD transfer might be difficult. The phony snow falling in front of the lens looks, well, phony. Probably any kind of clean-up program would read the phony snowfall as scratches and missing info and try to fill it in. Or maybe it might just shut the system down. Then there's the whole issue of flashing--it obscures detail to such an extent, maybe an HD transfer wouldn't look like much of an improvement over SD. And there must be a whole host of other problems, even WITH a great print as a starting point. So, somebody may be working on it, but I'd expect it to take more time than just about anything else.

with the whole flashing business, do you even know what is a "mistake" and what is "it's intended to look like that"? When I watch this movie, I just assume everything is intended as is. The snow at the end is atrocious – the one thing that jumps out at me as a glaring error. However, I believe the snow is actually real – they filmed the movie in sequence, by the time they were up to the final scene it had started snowing. So why does it look fake?   - did they add in fake snow cuz the real snow wasn't thick enough or consistent enough? Or did this crazy photographic process just make real snow look fake? I don't know ...

[cigar joe]

If I remember right it was because it wasn't consistent enough for the continuity, here is a great book on the film "Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller Reframing The American West" by Robert T. Self

[dave jenkins]

with the whole flashing business, do you even know what is a "mistake" and what is "it's intended to look like that"? When I watch this movie, I just assume everything is intended as is. The snow at the end is atrocious – the one thing that jumps out at me as a glaring error. However, I believe the snow is actually real – they filmed the movie in sequence, by the time they were up to the final scene it had started snowing. So why does it look fake?   - did they add in fake snow cuz the real snow wasn't thick enough or consistent enough? Or did this crazy photographic process just make real snow look fake? I don't know ...

The snow on the ground is real (the production got lucky). However, it all came down at once and stopped. They still needed to film most of the end and so did so with phony snow falling.

[dave jenkins]

If I remember right it was because it wasn't consistent enough for the continuity, here is a great book on the film "Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller Reframing The American West" by Robert T. Self

Thanks! 

[dave jenkins]

August:

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Audio commentary from 2002 featuring director Robert Altman and producer David Foster
• New documentary on the making of the film, featuring actors René Auberjonois, Keith Carradine, and Michael Murphy; casting director Graeme Clifford; and script supervisor Joan Tewkesbury
• New conversation about the film and Altman's career between film historians Cari Beauchamp and Rick Jewell
• Featurette from the film's production, shot on location in 1970
• Q&A from 1999 with production designer Leon Ericksen, hosted by the Art Directors Guild Film Society
• Archival footage from interviews with cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, in which he discusses his work on the film
• Gallery of stills from the set by photographer Steve Schapiro
• Excerpts from two 1971 episodes of The Dick Cavett Show featuring Altman and film critic Pauline Kael
• Trailer
• PLUS: An essay by film critic Nathaniel Rich

[T.H.]

It's going to be interesting to see how this transfer turns out since McCabe relied so much on soft focus. I have little doubt that it's going to be the definitive version to own but I'm still really curious. I actually thought this was announced earlier, I guess it was one of those clues thingies that leaked.

On the subject of the August criterion releases, I'm surprised and a little disappointed that only Woman in the Dunes is receiving an upgrade and not the other two movies in the previously released Teshigahara trilogy. I know the deformed once-beautiful woman subplot in The Face of Another is a little heavy-handed and pretentious, but I think it's some kind of masterpiece in spite of that. Pitfall is also a really worthy movie as well.

[Novecento]

It's going to be interesting to see how this transfer turns out since McCabe relied so much on soft focus. I have little doubt that it's going to be the definitive version to own but I'm still really curious. I actually thought this was announced earlier, I guess it was one of those clues thingies that leaked.

When Criterion released Heaven's Gate with its gorgeous cinematography by Zsigmond, there was a huge debate about how accurate the color scheme was. Personally I loved the Criterion release. Unfortunately Zsigmond is of course no longer with us.